This area is going to be quite spartan at this point. I will work on looks later but wanted to get some content up first.

Be warned, I live in > 1024x768 high-bandwidth (1.1mb DSL) world so some of these images and pages are large and heavy on the download. If you are still on a 56k modem, sorry but your experience here will be slow to say the least.

The all important screenshots (tons of them!)

I managed to get a series of screenshots gathered showing the intro animation of the black and white spots coming together showing a player logo (easteregg). I converted the series of screenshots into a pair of animated GIFs, a heart (don't ask! dunno why I chose the lame heart cuz I still don't know and I didn't find out until later that you could change it) and a woman... Don't worry about the chick, she's in a bathing suit, you ain't gonna see anything in these anyway, I was just foolin around with making full color tattoos (tutorial coming soon) and B&W rewarded me with a nice intro animation so a grabbed screenshots.

Logo1 (woman)
Logo2 (heart)


Rants and Raves:

In general, this is the single most frustrating game I have ever played. It is also video game crack and should come with a dealer's pager number to order more! It is very enjoyable and at the same time irritating as hell. Bottom line? Yea, I would get the game and play it all over again knowing what I know now. Some things should have been in a readme or in the manual. Some things should have been handled better. Some things need FIXED. In the long run GET THE GAME and PLAY IT! B&W will be a classic one day. It breaks ground in many ways and is a benefit to the gaming community, many of whom are already taking notes...you watch! Next couple years, there are going to be a nice handfull of games that are obvious knockoffs of B&W.

These are MY opinions, you are entitled to yours as well...

Raves:

• SA-wheat!: Radically beautiful rendering engine! The in-game graphics are, well, to use a cliché term: AWESOME! Although the polygon count is adjusted based on distance, there is not that noticeable a consequence to this and it still looks really good!
• Creature AI: Yowsa! The time spent on creature and villager AI shows and is very complex. This aspect really makes the game play as well as it does. Round of "AttaBoys" for the guys in the back for this one!
• Tattoo deVille: Freakin cool! Lots better than custom skins as you can easily change them during the game. Shame that full color tattoos are not available directly in B&W (*See my tutorial)
• Levels Beyond Levels: The level designers should take a bow. The lands are rich and diverse. Most of them were well thought out and executed with a variety of challenges. None of the lands gives you that "same old song, second verse" feeling. A rarity in today's gaming market. The fact there are only 6 (5 plus god's playground) is extremely limiting but offers room for an expansion pack which I assume will be forthcoming!
• Lights, Camera, Rockin!: The texturing, lighting and modeling group should also take a bow. Using multi polygon-count versions of some models (villagers particularly) the game engine can keep up framerates depending on how far the camera is from an object. The lighting and real-time shadow casting is simply beautiful and wholly unexpected. The sky could use a little better look (clouds look "fake" as does the background) but in general works. The varied weather adds to the game experience though I would have liked to see more low level fog and haze effects. One drawback is a snow shower doesn't SOUND like a RAIN shower guys! Maybe a visit up here to Wisconsin next January for the sound crew might be in order? I would have liked to see higher polygon counts on creatures since so much of your time is focused on them.
• Totally Immersive: Well. it is. You are totally immersed in the game with a wonderful variety of sounds and graphics that MATCH. It's obvious that a considerable effort was put into environment mapping and it shows.
• Blue light special! Puzzle Department: The in-game puzzles (quests and puzzles) are varied in their scope and challenge level. With very limited exceptions, you don't have to do ANY of the quests/puzzles to actually complete the game but they do add a lot to it if you do. In most cases the rewards are well worth the time spent and its nice that they don't force you into puzzle solving. They also don't force you along in the game. You progress to the next level when you damn well feel like it. You want to spend a week in level 1? Knock yourself out! This alone deserves a round of "attaboys". There are a couple puzzles that might be difficult or impossible for tone deaf or totally deaf people to solve (singing stones on land 1 & 2) but thankfully, again, the quests are NOT required to complete the game. The other one that would be difficult is the bell quest on land 4 but you CAN complete this quest using sight only (though much harder I have to admit). Many of the puzzles are replays of common childhood puzzles (towers of Hanoi as an example) but they are tactfully done and some (tree puzzles) even got harder ;).
• God. Party of 4: Well, this is sort a rant AND a rave. There are only 4 Gods in B&W, you and 3 others. The game progresses from land to land and most of your time is spent battling Lethys. Nemisis comes in at the end and is quite a challenge. I would have liked additional lands with additional Gods to do battle with. This limits my urge to replay the game. Perhaps more randomization should have been integrated into the game.
• The Deciple Zone: Very cool concept. You can assign (limited) tasks to villagers and they will cary out that task until you tell them to stop or they die. Most village duties can be taken care of by deciples but there are a few limitations (see rants).
• Yin vs Yang: The gameplay is really up to you as to the course you take. You can play good or you can play evil. You aren't picking sides at the start of the game (as for instance in RedAlert2 you coose American or Russian at the beginning), you can work back and forth AS you play the game. Villagers need food? Well, you can give it to them or you can pick up a few of the villagers and throw them into the sacrifice bowl! Either one soved the problem of lack of food but the one you choose is totally up to you. Villagers bitching about houses? There is a good and an evil solution to that as well. The style of play is totally up to the player. You are very rarely limited in your choices and in many cases (some quests), depending on your method, you will gain a different reward.

Rants:

• Micromanagement from hell: You are CONSTANTLY having to micromanage villager's lives as well as the life of your creature at the same time you are tryin to kick some Godly butt. An irritating fact of the game.
• Damn worshipers are always hungry: BUG! Worshipers can go through 20k of food in a heartbeat and there is no automated method of replenishing the food supply. You can't make a deciple to take care of it (as you can with the workshop) nor can you train your creature to keep them fed. You just CAN'T. Pain in the ass dealin with this AND the bug makes it worse. If they went through food at a reasonable rate, OK, but NO!
• Creature control panel: There AIN'T one! Why? I would like to see creature status on my screen all the time or be able to pull it up without leaving the task at hand to focus on the creature.
• Annoying bobsee twins: Frick and Frack, yin and yang. You know who I am talkin about! They chap my ass after about an hour of gameplay. Gimme a break and gimme a setting to turn their asses off. I still want the text messages so I can see how my creature is doing and WHAT he is doing but if you set the tips low enough so the bobsee twins don't pop up, you get no help for your creature, nor do you get any tooltips when you hold your mouse over something (needed for high altitude miracle grabbin)
• 7! Craps! Gimme another break! Only 1-7 for map locations? Oh..pleeezzz! Every game gives you 1-9 at least and most give you 1-9,0.
• Your Creature will eat that sort of thing more: What the hell did he eat? Why can't it say?
• Town status messages: Again there AIN'T any! Why? PITA (Pain in the ass for those less informed) having to zoom down close to listen to every freakin village to see what they want or need. Hell, I am halfway across the map, do I want to drag myself back to each village to check on progress? Hell no. Gimme a console I can pull down to see villager requests from the various villages. Then I can deal with them or not.
• Disaster! One of your villages is about to be taken over by another god!: Crap! Which village? Where? Hell, can't there be some sort of flare or map marker system for these alerts? Why should I drag my butt across the map lookin at town centers to see belief points to find the reason for the alert? How about a hot key that takes you right to the source of the alert? Red Alert has one as do most other strategy games.
• The intro from hell: Damn! It's LOOOOOOG and UNAVOIDABLE! Comeon, pleeze! Gimme an ESC out of it! Do I want to watch that LOOOOOG intro movie EVERY TIME I START A NEW GAME? NO NO NO! Dammit This has to be one of the most irritating points of the game. Dammit, let me press the ESC key and get on with the game.
• The training from hell: It's LOOOOOOG and UNAVOIDABLE! Comeon, pleeze! Gimme an ESC out of it! Crap! I know how to freakin move the damn mouse, I just finished a game and started a new character! Why am I training again? ESC should get me out of all that and and to the temple ready to begin Land 1 again. I am not saying to skip any of the quests, but damn, lemme get on with the game if I know the controls already!
  
• Forced at gunpoint: Similar to the intro from hell, why can't I press ESC to get out of a dialog sequence? Having to watch EVERY dialog AGAIN really limits my urges to replay the game. Yes it does.
• Chineese keyboard: Thats what Lionhead must have had when they came up with the keyboard layout because it doesn't make any sense on a standard English keyboard. OK, yea, you can configure SOME, repeat SOME of the keys but some are FIXED and can't be remapped, i.e.; M and R for example (as in Magic and Repeat if you didn't know). Very few players use the arrow keys to move within games, they just aren't comfortably placed on most KBs and they are a hell's half-acre from anything else on the KB. Most players use ASDW or SDFE for movement which leaves the surrounding keys easily reachable. Problem is the R. If you use SDFE, you can use W and R for movement because R is force mapped. IF R was not force mapped, you could use SDFE for rotate and forward\back and WR for left\right leaving QA for pitch up/down and for zoom in\out you have ZX. C is handy for getting to your creature, T is handy for temple. But none of this will work because R is in the way. DAMMIT! If you are going to allow keyboard remapping, allow ALL the keys to be remapped!
• Save Game: No it don't. It saves the VILLAGER'S game. It damn sure don't save MY game. They don't store your creature. They don't store your character. They just save what the villagers were doing and what was in the world at the time. WTF? Don't ya think this little tidbit of info would be in the manual or in a readme?
• Autosaving... Man, time to go eat lunch: At first, its short and sweet but later (especially on land 2 its really LOOOOG) it gets to the annoying state and eventually to the irritating state. The only setting is on or off? Why? Can't there be a time slider that might have say...OFF, 10 min, 30 min, 1hr, 2hr, 4hr, 6hr etc? That way we could still have the autosave but NOT at the extremely frequent rate it currently does it?
• One has all but one doesn't: Um..guys! C'mon! Why can't the character stats page have the same things the creature stats page has and vice versa? The creature page has its current alignment, the character page doesn't. The character page has alignment change, the creature page doesn't. Why doesn't the creature page have EVERYTHING thats in the CREATURE CAVE also? Everything in one place? Wow! What a concept.
• Stats from hell: OK, at first look the geek stats might be fun. Do I need it to tie up the game engine counting all the useless crap like lines of code, lines of script or how much time I spent looking at the freakin sky? I would much rather have a decent selection of stats (min/max framerate for graphics tweeking, miracles and game related stuff) and have the programmers working HARDER on debugging the damn game rather than putting counters between each event to slow things down. Granted I don't have a speed problem (dual 1gig overclocked to 1.3 and Gforce2Ultra) but dammit I bet low end systems could use the speed boost.
• Backyard Scrabble: OK, so I couldn't come up with a title for this one. There should be a character selection screen when B&W loads so you can select a character without having to completely enter the game and then change players only to LOAD AGAIN with the one you wanted in the first place.
• Creature Hosing 101: Land 5. Period. Not fair. You spend literally HOURS and HOURS training your creature. Honing his skills only to have them totally hozed and ruined on the last level. And since the wonderful save game section works so well, once you are into Land 5, your creature really IS hozed. Hozed when you play online. Hozed if you load a save game from a previous land. Just plain hozed. Its NOT right. There is no separation of Church and State here. Your online creature is the same as your off-line creature. Not right.
• You are on God Time: OK, so the game operates on God time..faster than normal so you can see day/night cycles and aging villagers. Why then does it take HOURS to pick up 20k in food or grain? There SHOULD be a shortcut to scoop up 20k worth in a matter of an instant and you are on your merry way. PITA to sit and wait. I swear half of my game time was actually spent picking up piles of food or wood. Hmmm..why the hell is't THAT on the status page..hmmm? You ARE a God right? Then a God should be able to pick up 20k of food as easily as he can pick up a tree or rock.
• Down to earth God: Ok you can pick up villagers, rocks, trees, animals etc. Um..why can't I pick up my creature? Why can't I pick up a house or building and move it? Imagine the belief points if you uproot a house and sling it across the map..yowzza! I see a house fly by and I get real religious real quick!
• Deciples 101: Ok, the deciple concept is cool. Why can't I make one for hauling food to the worship site? Why can't I make one for herding cattle? Why can't I make a dancing deciple? How come I can't make one that will take crates out depending on the needs of the village?
• Red Light: Why can't I change my color? I am a GOD after all. Why am I always RED. I want to be blue. I want to be green, or orange or ANY other color. But I CAN'T.